From “Esse Est Percipi,” a short story about fútbol by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Jorge Luis Borges (the latter was not a fan):
Savastano literally tumbled me to the dust. ‘There’s no score, no teams, no matches,’ he said. ‘The stadiums have long since been condemned and are falling to pieces. Nowadays everything is staged on the television and radio. The bogus excitement of the sportscaster- hasn’t it ever made you suspect that everything is humbug? The last time a soccer match was played in Buenos Aires was on 24 June 1937. From that exact moment, soccer, along with the whole gamut of sports, belongs to the genre of the drama, performed by a single man in a booth or by actors in jerseys before the TV cameras.’
‘Sir, who invented the thing?’ I made bold to ask.
‘Nobody knows. You may as well ask who first thought of the inauguration of schools or the showy visits of crowned heads. These things don’t exist outside the recording studios and newspaper offices. Rest assured, Domecq, mass publicity is the trademark of modern times.’